


Slipping

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Cold Comfort, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, stories about brooding elves and the women who love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 12:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After her mother's death, Fenris tries to comfort Hawke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slipping

**Author's Note:**

> First bits of dialogue shamelessly pilfered. There's also a gorgeous sketch to go along with this work by verabai, over at this link: http://verabai.tumblr.com/post/61221396906/slipping-this-image-was-haunting-me-ever-since

The deafening silence of the estate presses in on her at all sides, and she wishes she was back in that shack in Lowtown, for just an instant—or in Lothering, though she’s never once missed it before.

She should find Aveline.

No; Aveline would just want to talk. Isabela, maybe, or Varric—she could stand to get spectacularly drunk.

Her toes are numb. A walk to the Hanged Man seems inadvisable. And she can still remember the horror, the pity in whiskey-golden eyes—no, she can’t unsee it, not yet.

Anders. She would have to wade through thugs to get to his clinic. Her fingers itch for her blade; it would be worth it, just for that. Her companions, Bodahn, wouldn’t have to know. She puts enough weight on the ball of her foot to feasibly rise, to buckle her armor on, to slip out the window—

 _Mage. Like him. Like_ him.

The scent of elfroot and ozone—too much for her, right now. Even imagining it turns her stomach.

Once, the next name would have been the first. Now, her mind skips over the syllables, shielding her from a bloom of pain.

Bodahn shuffles papers downstairs. Sandal sniffs. Her mabari is silent, probably still curled in the shadowy corner beside the fireplace. He won’t so much as look at her.

 _I’ve seen the way you and that elf look at each other_ , Mother had said, more brightly than she’d said anything in years, and she hadn’t had the heart to tell her,  _it’s just me looking at him_ , or  _he doesn’t want me, Mama, I don’t know what he wants._

She’s glad that Mother died believing she had a future, but she wishes, selfishly, that she had been able to take comfort from her one last time—or just  _one_  time—before…

“I don’t know what to say.”

 _Get out_ , she wants to scream, but now her throat won’t let the words choke past her lips. _Get out, get out, get out_ —

“But I am here.”

Fenris always sounds bruised around the edges, but it’s worse now. When she looks up and he sees her face, the features so often set in stony countenance flinch, drift toward concern, and she looks away again because  _don’t you dare look at me like that_ —

“Say something,” she whispers, though she means to shout him from the house; her voice continues to fail her. “Anything.”

“They say that death is just another journey.” The red favor on his wrist is too bright for a ghost, but he is. He is. “Does that help?” His voice is closer now, casting her in his shadow.

“What does that mean?” She sees him twitch, as though about to reach out and reassure her with a touch. She thinks she’ll scream if he does. “Journey to where?”

“I don’t know.” He settles on the bed beside her, leaving an inch of room between them. “It’s just something people say. To be honest, I see no point in filling these moments with empty talk.”

She opens her mouth, but he’s right; she can think of nothing to say, so she ducks her head and stares at her knees. Humiliation slinks up her neck, a curling flame that bites into her skin. He had been the one to pull her (sobbing, screaming,  _failure_ ,  _failure_ ,  _failure_ ) from her mother’s body when Varric’s soft pleas had failed to rouse her. She wishes he would leave.

A heavy hand comes down on her shoulder. She flinches, but he holds firm. “If you want to talk, Hawke, talk,” he says, and he sounds like a wounded animal. She doesn’t dare look at him. “I will listen.”

“That’s not my name,” she says. She thinks someone ought to know. No one else does, not anymore.

There’s a long pause, then a bemused, “What?”

“Everyone calls me that,” she continues. “But I’m not.” She clears her throat. “Hawke’s just the name I started using with Meeran.”

“I’m…” It’s a false start. “I feel like a fool,” he confesses finally, squeezing her shoulder. His gauntlets bite into her flesh. She takes comfort in the pain. “Of course your name isn’t Hawke.”

“It’s what Mama called Father when she teased him,” she says. Her throat is too tight. He sounds too much like  _that_  night—all tender remorse—and finally, she has to dash tears from her eyes with the back of her wrist. “They’re all gone,” she mutters. “I promised Father, and then Carver, and Bethany, and now…everything I’ve done has been to protect us, and I keep failing. I suppose now I can’t fail anyone, anymore.”

He breathes. She tried to match him, to calm the uneven stuttering of her heart against her ribcage, but her concentration swims. Her sinuses burn. “If I told you you’d done your best,” he murmurs finally, “you would accuse me of lying.”

Numb, she nods.

“But your assessment is incorrect,” he continues. “Aveline, Isabela, the dwarf…even the apostates are grateful for their lives.” The tone of distaste implies their luck. She chokes out a laugh. It sounds wrong, too forced. “You can still fail them.”

“But not you,” she says, her voice all wet and wrong. “I’ve already done that, haven’t I.”

Immediately, she wishes she hadn’t said it. He stills beside her; his hand lifts from her shoulder. Now that he’s here, she doesn’t want him to go, but he will. He always does. In every dream, he slips from her grasp, a handful of smoke spurred by the breeze; in his mansion, he evaporates from between her fingers like the fumes of too-potent wine, invisible; in her estate, he’ll slip through the door, the intangible thief, and she’ll wonder if he was ever there to begin with.

There’s a rustle as he tugs off his gauntlets. When he turns her unwilling cheek to look at him, his green eyes are soft and wary. “Never,” he declares, crushingly gentle. She closes her eyes and greedily leans into the touch rather than look at him. “Without you, I would still be running.”

 _You’re still running_ , she thinks, but instead she blurts, “Will you stay?” Too blunt—but he doesn’t take his hand away. “Just for tonight. I don’t want to be…”

Her voice catches on “alone.” He’s already releasing the snaps on his breastplate, the spiky pauldrons falling from his shoulders. Beneath, he wears a protective undershirt; his tattoos slink down his collarbone into it. He doesn’t remove the red—ribbon, is it? It stays on his wrist. He does, though, carefully detach the crest from his leathers, placing it gently on his breastplate.

“How did you even get in?” she asks.

“I knocked,” he says, nonplussed.

“I told Bodahn—”

“He’s worried for you,” he says. “Did you ask him to turn away everyone, or just me?”

“I hate you,” she tells him, but there’s no fire in her words, and it sounds more like a confession than the assault she means it to be. He hears it too, and his lips hitch up on one side, a secret, guilty pleasure written out on his face.

“It would be easier for both of us if you did,” he agrees.


End file.
